In compliance with his telephoned request, Rose had packed her suit case, and was all ready to accompany him when he arrived at the Merrimans' apartment in a taxicab, to take her with him to the North Station to catch the nine o'clock train. She was irrepressibly the child, for the time being, and in her cheeks bloomed roses so colorful that Gertrude Merriman accused her of painting, while knowing well enough that joy needs no artistry.
"I'm almost too happy," she cried after hearing his voice over the wire, and proceeded to dance around the room, to the impromptu chant, "Donald, dear, is here, is here. Donald, dear, is here."
"Are you going to kiss him?" laughed her friend. But Rose was not to be teased, and answered, "Kiss him? I'll smother him with kisses. Isn't he my brother, and isn't he home again after being away two and a half years?"
When the apartment bell rang, it was Rose who ran to answer it, and whose sweet young voice, saying, "Oh, come up quick," Donald heard thrilling over the wire. His heart leaped, but his will steadied its increased pulsations. It leaped again when he reached the third floor, and the girl of his dreams threw herself upon him with laughter which was suspiciously like weeping, and with the smother of kisses, which she could not restrain nor he prevent, although each burned and seared his very soul.
She backed into the room and pulled him after her by the lapels of his coat; but, as the brighter light struck upon his face, she stopped with widening eyes, through which he could read the troubled question in her mind.
"Oh, my poor big brother. I didn't realize ... I mean, how you must have suffered. Poor dear, you don't have to tell me how ill you have been, so far away from all of us who love you."
Her pitying words drove the last nail in his crucified hopes. Not only were they, all too obviously, merely those of a child who loved him with a sister's love, but they told him how changed, wan and aged he was; one who was, in fact, no longer fitted to mate with radiant youth.
"'Old, ain't I, and ugly?'" He imitated Dick Deadeye with a laughing voice, but the laugh was not true.
"Old and ugly?" she repeated, in horror. "Donald, how can you? You're tired out, that is all; and as for this—" she lightly touched the sheen of silvery gray at his temples, where the alchemy of Time and stress had made its mark—"it makes you look so ... so distinguished that I am ashamed of my frivolously familiar manner of greeting you. But I just couldn't help it, and I promise not to embarrass you again. Yes, you were embarrassed. I could read it in your face."